


To Be Happy

by thesquidsquad



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Celestial!Levi, Drabble, Happy Ending, Leviathan - Freeform, M/M, Trigger Warning!Carla has mental illness, ereri, haha see what I did there, haha yeah, modern!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:31:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesquidsquad/pseuds/thesquidsquad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eren was very young, he read in a small leather book with faded yellow pages that if he made one thousand paper stars, he would be happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble that smacked me in the face at one in the morning. 
> 
> Enjoy.

When Eren was very young, he read in a small leather book with faded yellow pages that if he made one thousand paper stars, he would be happy. He learned how to make the stars, and he begged his mother to buy him paper in every color so they would be beautiful.

He made ten stars that day.

Weeks passed, and Eren went to school for the first time. He was a kind and beautiful child with a big heart, but that made him vulnerable, for even children can be cruel when they're jealous. His mother told him that he would always be her wonderful, perfect little boy, but Eren couldn't stop wishing he was different, better.

He made twenty-five stars that day.

The years passed, and Eren grew. Words didn't hurt him quite so much, and his two best friends were always there to lift his spirits when something insisted on keeping them down. Things were better. The jar of stars gathered dust in his closet.

His family moved across the country, leaving everything, including Eren's friends, behind. On the first day at his new school, Eren felt so alone it crippled him. This was the first time he'd had no one, the first time he'd been in a new place full of strangers without a friend in sight. He sat down, pulled some paper out of his backpack, and folded little stars, slowly noticing as his fingers worked the paper that he didn't feel so alone anymore. He learned how to focus on his studies in a way that made him forget about the pit in his stomach, and it worked, for a while. He still had his family, after all.

His father left the night of his sixteenth birthday.

He stayed in his mother's bedroom for two days while she wept, and he made one-hundred stars to pass the time, struggling to keep them away from the moisture dripping down his face.

Eren's mother wasn't recovering. He watched as she was slowly drained of her vibrancy, dissolving into a shell of her former self, despondent and listless. She wouldn't get out of bed, and Eren couldn't stand to watch the only person he had left waste away. He quit school to find a job, learned how to cook, and every night after he made dinner and coaxed his mother into eating her portion, he made ten stars to distract himself from how much he wanted to break. He couldn't explain it, but when he folded the stars, he wasn't truly alone. They lived like this for a month until Eren grew desperate and called an old friend of his father's.

He was a tall, optimistic man, and he praised Eren for being so strong through such hardship. He left a bag full of medicine behind for Eren's mother, free of charge for the child who had been forced into bearing the responsibilities of an adult.

Eren was so relieved that he made forty-five stars that night, one for each year of his mother's life.

It only took a few weeks for the medicine to start working. Eren's mother started cooking again, started smiling again, started loving again. She managed to snag a job she could work from home, teaching English as a second language to online students. Eren spent every moment he could with her when he wasn't at his own job. He still couldn't go back to school, they needed the money, and even though his mother would never admit it, Eren knew how close they were to being completely broke. He had been the one struggling to hold their lives together for these last few months, after all. He was constantly afraid, afraid of losing what little they had, afraid of losing her again the moment his concentration lapsed, but she didn't know how much he worried, and he would never let her find out. He could be strong for her.

Everything was going back to normal, or at least what had become normal for the two of them. They hadn't heard from Eren's father, and Eren found that he wasn't really upset anymore. His mother was working and sleeping too much to worry about much of anything— the medicine made her very drowsy. She couldn't drive when her mind was weighed down by the soporific effects of the drug, so Eren kept himself busy, leaving the house in their beat-up little car to pick up necessities while his mother rested up in bed before making dinner.

All was well, and Eren forgot about his stars again.

Two years passed, and time turned Eren into a respectable adult, aging his body to catch up with his world-worn mind. His mother constantly told him how proud she was of who he'd become, smart and responsible and very focused on his studies. He had been taking classes online, and he finally allowed himself to plan a future for himself, preparing to go to a local college and continue to take care of his mother at home. To do that, however, he needed scholarships, and to earn scholarships, he had to keep his grades up, especially since he didn't have a diploma yet.

His life was _finally_ straightening itself out. His mother was doing better as well, and even though she would never be as she was before Eren's father left, she was almost completely recovered from her episode all those years ago. Occasionally, she would call Eren while he was at work, all in a panic, because she thought he'd left her too. She'd become very anxious and very forgetful, but she always had a smile for Eren when he walked in the door every night.

They moved a few miles away, into a much smaller and more affordable apartment, but living in such a small community had is downfalls, and eventually, people started spreading rumors about the boy with the crazy mother. Eren remembered his stars again.

He folded a star for every horrible thing he heard about her.

Eren's mother found out about the rumors, and even when Eren assured her that there was nothing wrong, that all those people were just bored and looking for something to gossip about, she was determined to protect her son. She was determined to show him and everyone else who whispered things about her that she wasn't crazy, that she worked hard and loved her child more than the world, just like every mother should.

Eren received a call at work informing him that his mother had wrapped her car around a telephone pole, and that she was in critical condition in the emergency room.

She'd tried to drive to the grocery store, tried to prove she could do something on her own, forgetting about the effects of her medication in the process. She was most likely too drowsy to even see the pole, the doctor said.

Eren stayed in the hospital for three days and three nights, surrounded by colorful paper and making stars until he couldn't feel his paper-cut fingers.

He had nine hundred and fifty in his jar by the time the doctors told him her time was up.

He almost sprinted out of the hospital room after saying goodbye to his mother for the last time.

 

 

 

 

 

It's very dark now, and Eren walks all the way from the hospital to the pedestrian bridge that stretches over a wide grey river, connecting one side of the city to the other.

Eren thinks it's about midnight, but it's hard to tell in the liquid darkness of the new moon. It doesn't matter either way, it doesn't change the fact that he didn't make enough stars in time to save his mother, in time to be happy. He sits on the cold concrete of the bridge and cuts the rest of his paper into strips before he starts folding again. He doesn't need to see what he's doing. His fingers know the action by heart, having learned it so very long ago.

Eren folds his last strip of paper to make his nine hundred and ninty-ninth star.

He bites down on his hand to keep from screaming, choking down the metallic taste of his own blood. As tears stream down his face and into his mouth, Eren remembers. He digs into the pocket of his sweatshirt with shaking fingers and pulls out his mother's paper hospital bracelet.

It's the most perfect star he's ever made.

In a blinding flash of bright blue light, a man appears in front of him, a small, slender man with a silky black fringe of hair and skin as pale as the moon. The man doesn't speak, simply ghosts forward to kneel gracefully in front of the anguished boy, pressing his cool hands to Eren's teary cheeks.

Eren can hear a voice in his mind as he stares at the radiant being in front of him, deep and velvety as the night, soothing the pain that's lancing through every fiber of his being. _I am the Celestial Dragon, the constellation Leviathan. You have been strong for so long, little one. You may rest now, I can feel the weary weight of your troubled soul, and I will be here when you wake._

The man is surprised at the way this boy's beautiful eyes harden at his words, surprised that he has any fire left in him after all he's gone through. _Why do you look at me in this way?_

"I know you." Eren's sure of it. This ethereal man has been with him in every star his fingers have ever crafted, and his presence is as familiar and comforting as anything Eren's ever felt. "Wherever you came from, take me back with you," Eren insists steadily. "There's nothing left for me here."

Silver eyes soften at the boys words, words that were spoken in a voice far too old for the years shown on his young face. The man briefly searches the the boy in front of him before nodding gracefully to himself and reaching over to pick up the familiar jar full of one thousand paper stars. _Hold out your hands, and your wish is my command._

Eren holds out his hands, and deft fingers comb the stars out of the jar, into Eren's waiting palms. They flow straight into his skin, racing through his veins and decorating him with hundreds of white pinpoints, spiraling and twisting as they arrange themselves into constellations. All of the pain, far too much for such a short life, melts away with each pattern that appears on Eren's tanned skin. The slender man rises, watching the light coming from his own small body mingle with the light streaming off of the broken human bowed at his bare feet. Eren is trembling, but with what, the Leviathan does not know. He leans down, gently angling the boys chin upwards to press three soft kisses in a line down his face— one on his brow, one on his nose, and one on his lips, leaving more glittering stars to spread across his cheeks like a spray of effulgent freckles in the wake of his affection. He runs his thumb softly along one twinkling cheekbone before straightening and extending his pale hand in offering.

Eren reaches, but hesitates at the last second. "If I take your hand, will I be happy?" He asks quietly, conviction wavering at the prospect of going with this strange, yet entirely familiar man to wherever he came from, knowing he'd never return.

The man smiles softly and crouches, moving his slender fingers to stroke the glowing form of Casseopeia decorating the skin of Eren's cheek. _If you take my hand, we will become the sky. We will be in the patterns of every constellation in existence, we will be the fire of the sun and the crystals of the planets. We will be in the dust of the moon and in the light of the stars, and you will never be alone again. Every atom of you will exist with every atom of me, and I'll hold on to you so tightly, nothing will ever be able to tear us apart. We will be more than one and less than two, and what we feel will be greater than any love that could ever exist. Tell me little one, do you think you will be happy?_

Eren smiles his first true smile in years and takes the glowing hand of the Leviathan, laughing as they explode into glittering stardust and race away from this world together, scattering into the night sky.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry but I'm not XD 
> 
> Gimme some sugar in the form of comments kudos notes whatever I'll be delighted with anything. 
> 
> My tumblr is @bitchflavoredicecube if anyone wants to talk I'm very lonely
> 
> Thanks for reading byeeee


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